Fair enough - it is beyond debate that episcopal leadership matters. However, I'd have to offer a couple of points:

1) Bishops cannot be everywhere. They cannot be there when our children face important moral decisions, they cannot review every song that makes its way onto an iPod, they cannot be at every happy hour conversation where one friend in the group decides to bash Church teaching, etc. In other words, the onus is not solely on the bishops, it is also on a laity that did not want to look "uncool" to the world by promoting traditional Catholicism too much, and I am sure every reader here can recall a time where he/she did not defend the Faith as adequately has he/she should have. (I have too many of those moments to count.) If you ask Catholics "Why do you do _____ that violates Church teaching?", very few will answer, "Because my bishop did not say anything about it, so I thought it was okay." A handful more might answer "Because my priest did not say anything about it." The vast majority will say "I've got a number of Catholic friends that _____, so I figured it couldn't be that bad."

2) It is probably no surprise that I am skeptical about the correlation of the Novus Ordo Mass with the general collapse of Catholicism and would need to see some very detailed data that has no other explanation, that cannot be explained by its coincidence with the general cultural tsunami of the 1960s. (I know you've done posts like this before, but maybe one combining all the data might be interesting.) Keep in mind that the Mass of the Ages did not keep clergy here from writing about lackadaisical religious practice of Catholic settlers during the time of Bishop DuBourg. Nor did it prevent the secular French Revolution or the anti-Church movement in Mexico in the early 20th century. And so on.

And even if the data shows a sharp correlation between the end of Vatican II and several downward trends, I think a more reasonable hypothesis is that the expansive (mis)interpretation of Vatican II gave numerous interest groups a chance to cause a dambreak all at once, rather than simply draining the reservoir more slowly over decades. In other words, I submit it is a bit of a stretch to think that, if the Mass had simply not changed, the majority of Catholics would not, for example, be using contraception today. In short, I think the cultural undercurrents for the Church's decline were already there, and Vatican II simply provided an excuse for certain groups to accelerate those currents, rather than Vatican II itself having introduced some doctrine that caused the collapse. We even have to entertain the sobering hypothesis that the "Catholic golden decades" of the 1940s and 1950s were the anomaly - the Baby Boom was happening, and people tend to be more attentive to church matters when they have small children.

That entire ramble said, I'm open to arguments that might persuade me otherwise.

As soon as Pope Francis resigns, I nominate our blogger host to become Pope Tim. Pope Tim gets it. Pope Tim knows what needs to be done. Pope Tim will rebuild the traditional wall that separates the Community of the Faithful from the Society of the Lost. Perhaps it seems ridiculous that a guy from St. Louis could be a pope. But, in light of the last 49 years, and in light of what has been written on this blog for several years now, I am sure that Pope Tim, whatever shortcomings he may have, would be, by devout Catholics, called Pope Tim the Great, and would deserve that acclaim.

A Day That Will Live in Glory

Pray for the Four Cardinals: Burke, Caffarra, Meiser and Brandmuller

“You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day."